Monday, 15 July 2013

AUTHOR GUEST BLOG NUMBER THREE: Julie Bozza

A Paean to Wikipedia

I love Wikipedia. I may have mentioned that already in my blog. A
few times. But it bears repeating! And I’m sure there are some
likeminded folk out there reading this right now…

Just the other day my husband and I were watching an episode of
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit when they mentioned ‘the
Dark Net’ – you know, where all the really nasty stuff is kept.
“They’re just making that up!” I scoff. Bruce promptly hauls
his laptop over, and a few taps later he says, “Actually, there’s
a page on Wikipedia…” I totally LOL’d.

I was fascinated to find related Wikipedia articles on:

the Deep
Web, which is all the (mostly innocent) stuff that
simply isn’t or can’t be picked up by search engines, which
trawl the Surface
Web;

a Darknet,
which is a network where only trusted peers can interact, and can do
so anonymously. Wikipedia suggests that ‘Darknets are often
associated with dissident political communications and illegal
activities’, so I’m guessing that’s what the SVU were
investigating; and

the Dark
Internet, which refers to computers or networks that
are deliberately not connected to the Internet, or are so obsolete
as to not be able to connect.

Fascinating stuff! Okay, if I were writing a dissertation rather
than novels, I wouldn’t rely on Wikipedia, but still. It’s quick,
convenient, and full of things you never knew you needed to know.

Perhaps my favourite page ever is Toilet
paper orientation – a page so long and detailed that
it includes nine sections titled Context and relevance,
Preliminaries, Arguments, Survey results,
Themes (three subheadings), Consequences, Similar
controversies, Solutions (two subheadings) and Noted
preferences. Not to mention a raft of endnotes and references…
You won’t find a pesky little ‘This article needs additional
citations’ warning here! Someone took this topic very very
seriously indeed.

As well they might. This is serious stuff. I stumbled across the
article while writing my novel The Apothecary’s Garden in
which Hilary, a lifelong loner, is coming to terms with sharing his
home with Tom. ‘Now,’ I wondered, ‘what are the issues they’d
face…?’ I replied immediately, of course. I didn’t have to look
far at all for an answer. ‘They hang the toilet paper rolls in
opposite directions!!!’ There was more total LOL’ing. ‘Perfect,’
I respond, high–fiving myself.

You may well be nodding to indicate your deep understanding of
this issue right now. If you’re not, well… all I can say is that
Bruce and I moved into our current home over eight years ago. Neither
bathroom nor en suite had a toilet roll holder when we moved in. And
(despite some desultory shopping efforts way back when) they still
don’t. The toilet roll sits on a nearby shelf instead, and it
doesn’t matter which way up it’s standing. It’s arrangements
like this that save marriages, I tell you!

In any case, I needed to know what terms to actually use to
describe the different orientations, so I Googled something that must
have been appropriate, for the relevant Wikipedia article was listed
first in the search results. What more could I possibly need to know
about the matter?

Like any encyclopaedia (or dictionary or thesaurus), it’s hard
to stop at just one titbit of information… and of course those
hyperlinks make it all too easy to browse your winding way through
some of the four million articles… until you overload your
short–term memory and entirely forget what you were looking for in
the first place.

Beware the home page! It tempts you hither and thither with a
featured article, current news–related articles, ‘Did you know…’
questions from the newest content, and ‘On this day…’ snippets
as well.

Which is how I found out that Liu
Rushi (1618–1664) was a famous courtesan and poet in
the late Ming dynasty, who ‘embarked on a campaign to marry the
respected scholar Qian Qianyi’ by dressing in men’s clothing and
asking him his opinion on one of her poems. Within a year she’d
moved in, they were together until he died, and their poetry was
published together as well as separately. Wikipedia notes that ‘her
affinity for cross–dressing persisted after they were married …
on occasion [she] made calls on her husband’s behalf whilst dressed
in his Confucian robes’. What an awesome pair they must have been!

From any Wikipedia page you can click on the Random
article link, which might lead you anywhere else. Which
is a useful way to introduce my last example, because I cannot for
the life of me remember how I stumbled across it. I was very pleased
I did, though!

The article is titled Competent
man, and it describes ‘a stock character [male or
female] who can do anything perfectly, or at least exhibits a very
wide range of abilities and knowledge, making him a form of
polymath’. This isn’t a concept I knew about when I wrote The
Definitive Albert J Sterne, but it was such a joy to find the
article, as that is exactly what I had in mind for Albert himself.

What really cracked me up here, however, was serendipitously
discovering The
Most Interesting Man in the World, a character in an
advertising campaign for beer, who is ‘a bearded, debonair
gentleman in his 70s’ (bless his silk socks). Outrageous tales of
his youthful derring–do are recounted in a dryly humorous
style. I’m laughing just re–reading the article! (And while we’re
here, I also love how these off–beat topics are somehow made to fit
into the encyclopaedic template. The Most Interesting Man’s
occupation is listed as ‘Advisor’.)

On that droll note, it’s time for one last random article…
which in this case is the disambiguation for Salivary
nuclei… And I didn’t know I needed to know that!
Thank you once more, Wikipedia. I doff my hat.

About Me

Manifold Press is a UK-based semi-pro e-publishing concern founded by a group of authors with considerable experience in creating same-sex fiction. Our aim is to offer a variety of gay romance novels with the emphasis on quality of characterisation and storytelling.